Modeling physiological characteristics in a human or animal patient may be useful in a number of different situations. For example, modeling coronary artery blood flows, pressures and other characteristics may be used for assessing coronary artery disease and evaluating treatment options. Various embodiments of a noninvasive method and system for providing such physiological modeling are described, for example, in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/013,561, filed Jan. 25, 2011, and entitled “Method and System for Patient-Specific Modeling of Blood Flow,” which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.
Using computation fluid dynamics and three-dimensional models of various portions of a patient's anatomy to generate physiological measurements from noninvasively generated patient-specific data is a complex process. In order to be useful in assessing a patient's disease and evaluating treatment options, the computer models generated by such a process must be sufficiently detailed to be accurate. At the same time, if the models are too detailed, they may require unrealistic amounts of computing power and/or take impractical amounts of time to create. For example, in modeling the coronary arteries to assess blood pressures and/or blood flows, as might be used in assessing the need for an intervention such as placement of a stent or bypass graft, computer models must be sufficiently detailed to allow for computation of blood flow and/or blood pressure. At the same time, to be useful, these computations must be provided to a physician in a reasonable amount of time and must still be accurate.
Thus, a need exists for a method and system for assessing coronary anatomy, myocardial perfusion, and coronary artery flow noninvasively. Such a method and system must be sufficiently accurate to promote confidence in the assessment of the patient's physiology. At the same time, the method and system needs to be practical from the standpoint of the time required to provide the physiological data and the computing power required to do so.
The foregoing general description and the following detailed description are exemplary and explanatory only and are not restrictive of the disclosure.